jp_davis

WoTF???

2009-07-04T16:32:50Z

I emerge from the grave this July 4th, because a) it's a holiday and I suddenly have time to check/post on LJ; and b) to let everyone formally know that a story of mine has been named a finalist in the 2nd Quarter 2009 Writer's of the Future Contest! I have to say, I'm fairly bursting with happiness about it-- it's extremely cool to be a finalist; just the idea that four of the the WoTF judges, all of whom are icons of the field, are going to read my little story is pretty darn amazing.

I have never been good with managing expectations-- unlike carrie_ryan who can daydream ceaselessly about success, if I try and do that, I just get extremely wound up. To that end, I am keeping all my fingers and toes crossed, but I am simultaneously doing my best not to think about it. Instead, this seems like a great opportunity to point out the seven other great writers who I am lucky enough to share finalist status with. They are:

Dario Ciriello of California
Simon Cooper of Ireland
jasonfischer of Australia
William Mitchell of London
Chris Tissell of Oregon
Susan Watkins of Oregon
Jeff Young of Pennsylvania

I've been able to lay hands on fiction from the first four who I've linked to above (all available from the links), and from them alone, it looks like this is really an incredibly talented bunch and the competition will be extremely fierce. I am both initimidated and honored to keep this company. Chris, Susan, and Jeff, if you happen to see this, my googlefu failed on you, but I would love to read some of your work. Given the quality of the four folks whose work I hae read, I'm sure it's pretty awesome.

And that's really the great thing about all this. Sure, I would like to win. Seriously, I would really like to win. Like "sizeable envelope of cash with Robert Silverburg's name on it" like to win. But even if I don't, and even though I haven't read the specific stories competing with mine, just being in the same category of these up-and-coming SF stars is incredible. Now somehow I have to not explode for until the judging is announced in a month...

Query-Aid

2009-04-13T17:33:20Z

I emerge from the billowing mists of Work/Life to turn your eyes briefly to something special: Nathan Bransford's Agent for A Day Contest. This is really fantastic-- Nathan Bransford has posted/is posting 50 real queries throughout the day with 3 real published authors' queries hidden somewhere within, and your job is to find the three amongst the rest.

I don't normally post about contests (or at all, the cheekier of you might be inclined to say-- simmer down), but this one caught my eye not because you might win something but because there is so much for writers to gain from it. I got about 5 into it before I realized how quickly going through these starts to jade you toward what might otherwise be good books. You simply have to-- you can only request five, and you'll get bogged down if you stop to consider how each one might be really good and how you might have just overlooked it. This is how it is every day for agents, I gather, and really hammers home why and how you need to make your query stand out. Kudos to Nathan Bransford for desigining it-- this just wouldn't work without the contest incentive to force people to view it with a real eye towards finding the right ones (just like an agent).

Much thanks to anywherebeyond for pointing this out first.

Pardon My Language

2009-03-16T14:28:10Z

But "Syfy?"

Are you fucking kidding me?

I feel more rant on the way. Stay tuned.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is Here....

2009-03-10T17:46:58Z

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is out on shelves now! Why don't you have a copy yet? Why, I ask? Quit lollygagging, go get it now!

I see you still lollygagging! Go! Shoo!

Book Launch:30!

2009-03-08T20:07:47Z

Two days until The Forest of Hands and Teeth officially hits shelves! I don't know if it's gauche to shamelessly pimp your significant other's book, but let's be honest, I don't know from tact to begin with so I would do it even if I did know it was gauche. I have watched this book go from being a shy little idea in carrie_ryan 's mind to be the amazing thing that it is today, and I really want to share my excitement and pride with the whole world, so indulge me a little here.

Way back in November '06, Carrie told me she had come up with this idea that she was playing with that was completely different from anything she had written to that point. She wouldn't tell me anything about it at first, and it wasn't until the first chapter was written that I got to step into the world of Mary and the Forest of Hand's and Teeth. Carrie insisted it was just for play, that it would never sell, but I've never seen such a firey passion in her. As soon as I heard the first line, I knew that she had something special, and I was not disappointed. Mary's world is a bleak one, a terrifying vision of the future, but it is one filled with hope, too. It's a world where the human spirit is bloodied, but unbowed. And even as the people around her succumb to the dreadful malaise of life constantly surrounded by the hungry dead, the never-waivering visages of their loved ones constantly clawing for their flesh, Mary dreams. Who hasn't been in that situation-- not surrounded by the undead (I hope), but surrounded by the living who have lost themselves, who have given in to the world around them? Who hasn't wondered if they are the only one who still holds on to the thought that things can be different, better? Who hasn't felt the pressure, not just the societal pressure, but the internal need for acceptance, telling them that it's best if they give in too, if they just accept what the world is and give up on fantasies?

This is Mary-- though her world may be fantastic, the people in it are terrifyingly real. And isn't that what all good zombie stories are about, the people? Zombies aren't like other monsters, that are characters in themselves-- they are literarily what they are literally, a mockery of reality, an element of setting that just looks like an element of character. I don't mean to denigrate stories where zombies are good horror fodder or the butt of limitless jokes, but to me, the timeless zombie story is one where the zombies exist simply to push the characters to the limit and expose who they are underneath. I have to admit, I always knew that Carrie was a fabulous and gifted writer, but even I was astonished to see her get everything so right, to make these real and flawed and amazingly three-dimensional characters that speak so well to life today despite existing in a future as distant from now as the sun from a star at midnight.

I've read The Forest of Hands and Teeth many times now, and seen it through many variations, and I can honestly say that it's never once been a chore. And each time I've seen, I see some new chord, some fresh element that was previously hidden from me but resonates deeply, like Jed's struggle to balance his family with his own sense of duty and conformity, or Harry's profoundly tragic love of Cass, forever distracted and abused by his unquenchable obsession with Mary. I hope that you will see these things, too, and I can't wait to discuss them with you, I can't wait to hear what you get from it, good and bad. Because even when Carrie was swearing that The Forest of Hands and Teeth would never see daylight, I knew it was a story that had to be shared, and I'm so amazingly happy and proud that she's gotten the opportunity to share it with you.

FHT hits shelves Tuesday. As a reader, not simply as the fiance of the author, I'd tell you to go out and find yourself a copy (preferably purchasing <cough>) and see it for yourself. I can't promise you'll love it like I do-- you may even hate it, as someone somewhere surely will. But what I can promise that you'll see something there, one way or another, that will make you think deeply and feel passionately. And for me, that's what literature is all about.

A Brief Memo to the World (and the Legal World In Particular)

2009-01-14T15:20:54Z

Dear all,

The word "insure" means "to guarantee against loss or harm." The word "ensure" means "to make sure or certain." Thus, when you "insure" something, you agree to make someone whole for a loss. When you "ensure" it, you make sure it happens. The words are not interchangeable. Unless you are dealing with insurance, you almost always want the latter. No matter how bad you want to press that "i," you are wrong. If you persist in "insuring" that something happens, especially in formal documents, I will have no choice but to tear my hair out, run down the halls screaming, and beat you in an animalistic rage.

Thank you for your time.

Is a Bad Story Art?

2009-01-07T13:28:49Z

Imagine this: a young man, disaffected with life and its thousand daily stings, channels that raw emotion into a work of imagination. He dreams up a world where all the little cruelties of modern life are given a concrete form, where hope becomes a personified, unstoppable force, and where the future is a shining jewel whose mysteries, good and ill, hide behind an impenetrable veneer of red crystal. He takes these thoughts, this expression of his dreams and his very soul and puts them to paper, and out from from his quivering pen flows... something akin to the infamous Eye of Argon, often lauded as the worst piece of fantasy literature ever written.* Most people can agree that our young man’s work is terrible. But to paraphrase Kipling, it’s not very clever, but is it art?

What got me thinking about this, as usual, is video games. For anyone who hasn’t picked it up, I play a lot of video games, and the perennial favorite argument in the video game circle is “can video games be art?” A recent post by carrie_ryan rebuts some specters of the same argument directed at YA lit, and we see this type of argument directed at all types of allegedly “genre” literature. That got me thinking about the nature of “art,” and rather than doing a bunch of high-falutin’ research on the history of art criticism, LJ seemed to be as good a place to take the discussion as any.

So my question is, while we sit and talk about whether the latest summer blockbuster movie or chick-lit release or first-person shooter or whatever is really good enough to be called art, does quality really have anything to do with being artistic? I’ve seen enough works I’ve really thought were amazing flop and enough things succeed, both commercially and critically, which I personally could not imagine anyone ever letting out into the market that I have come to accept the fact that taste is way subjective, and my tastes may not in any way reflect those of people at large. May not even be similar, in fact. So if quality really does matter to artistic merit, how do we judge it? And if it doesn’t, then isn’t a child’s stick figure drawing just as artistic as Picasso?

To my point: I think writers write for two different purposes: 1) to entertain; and 2) to achieve artistic merit. Some people write for the former, some for the latter, and probably most of us for both. But we take this idea of art very seriously. And I wonder if that isn’t a cop-out, a way of allowing ourselves to aspire to something without ever forcing us to define exactly what it is we want to be. Is it really universal appeal we’re trying to reach? Emotional resonance? Effective storytelling or innovation? If we nail down what we’re aiming for, maybe that will help us reach it. And maybe it would help us focus our criticism and not be so pretensious if we acknowledge that even a story we don’t like is a work of art.

Anyway, these are just my impressions. What I’d really love to hear are your thoughts on the issue. Does “art” have a meaning to you? Am I just missing the obvious, or way off base? What do you aspire to in your writing?

* I have no reason to believe that this is in any way the origin of The Eye of Argon. Its reference here is purely for demonstrative purposes.

Looking for Group

2008-11-23T15:41:51Z

So the other day, I wrote a story and even polished it up a little. Yay! And that’s when it occurred to me that in the last year of novel work, I have completely and totally lost all of my critiquing connections. Of course I still have my vaunted First Reader, and brother-man JED, to both of whom I am eternally grateful, but I used to frequent sites like Critters and Baen’s Universe’s slush boards (which don't even seem to be working right now) to get feedback advice from a wide variety of readers with a wide variety of perspectives. Now, not so much.

It’s not that those sites have fallen off the map-- it’s more that I have. Each of the sites I’m familiar with essentially require (whether overtly or through practicality, in the case of Baen’s) you to review a bunch of stories before you can expect to get reviews on your own. While this is a perfectly reasonable request, I just don’t have the time anymore to review 3 to 5 stories a week to get one of mine reviewed three months after I write it (okay, that was directed straight at Critters. Some of the other sites aren’t nearly as bad, but the same principal applies).

So now I am in the market for short story critters. My output is way too low to join a regular group, but I’m hoping to find someone else out there in the same position, who produces a story every once in a blue moon that they’d like to get an objective opinion on and who wouldn’t mind doing the same in exchange. If anyone knows of such a person, send them on over!

Utterly unrelated note: played the Tomb Raider Underworld demo yesterday. I will say that it’s fantastically gorgeous, and despite some rather frustrating camera issues, it’s good to see Lara back to her old-school tomb raiding archaeology-be-damned hijinx. But because I am a bizarre person, what really annoyed me was when I pulled my way through a jungle to find two separate groups of not one but three tigers waiting for me. Seriously, people, is one tiger not enough to keep Ms. Croft limber these days? I mean, tigers are solitary animals, they establish a range and chase other tigers out of it. They don’t wander around in freakin’ hordes looking for adventurers to narf on. Let’s get some scientific accuracy up in this piece, please?

A Call to Arms

2008-11-06T13:24:37Z

On Tuesday, I spent all day knocking on doors. Metal doors, wooden doors, doors peeling with paint, doors that creaked and shuttered when I banged on them until I was scared I might knock them down. Sometimes there were people behind those doors, more often not, more often we just left little paper hangers that said “Vote TODAY-- Obama.”

I don’t think we saw a person who we didn’t harass twice. At first, when I started doing this, I felt awkward, self-conscious, upset to be intruding into people’s lives. But then we kept hearing the same response over and over again: “Thank you.”

Thank you for doing this. We appreciate your efforts. We’re so glad to see you. We were beyond welcome, in neighborhoods where we clearly didn’t belong, in areas where most people, myself included, would be scared to walk around in the middle of the day. I don’t know that I personally achieved anything, but it showed me what is really going on in America today. The unbelievable energy that went into Barack Obama’s movement. The very unexaggerated feeling that this presidency is really a turning point for race in America. The fact that this is a milestone that people have been waiting for since the birth of this nation.

But one man stuck out to me the most. He was a young man, sitting on his porch at 11:30 in the morning, low-backed. He was the one who said “I’m not going to vote.” He said “it doesn’t matter.” I gave him the campaign spiel, how it was really close in North Carolina, yadda yadda, how this was change, didn’t he want change? “Yeah,” he said. “But my vote doesn’t matter.”

That night, as I watched Barack Obama give his victory speech, I kept thinking about him. How I really wanted to go back to that neighborhood Wednesday, to find him, to say “See? You do matter.” And for the first time, it’s true. And it’s not just race. Listening to Obama, I realized that we all matter. That he’s not just taking the reins and let us go. This movement really is about us, all of us, even those who didn’t vote for him, even those who still oppose him, to which they are of course entitled.

Everyone here matters. It’s an amazing feeling, and one that everyone should share, not just here, but all around the world. Tom Brokaw, after the election results were announced, said “We don’t really understand the significance of this. Now, people are going to be energized to go to Washington like we haven’t seen since Kennedy. They’re going to feel the energy and want to be a part of this, to stand up and say ‘count on me.’”

I feel it. For the first time in my life, I feel like we really can change the world. And I’m no politician (thank god), and I don’t know if I’ll pack up and go to Washington, but this is the way the world changes, and I want in. I hope you’ll all join me, each in our own way, each from our different backgrounds and points of view, black, white, Republican, Democrat, gay, straight. Because agree or disagree with Mr. Obama, there’s one thing he said that is now undeniably true: “Yes, we can.”

Thank you, Mr. Obama. Thank you, everyone who worked for him, who voted for him. Thank you everyone who gave him the opposition he needed to really blossom. Now let’s go change the world.

A Time for Pride

2008-11-05T01:45:19Z

I planned on writing a voting post about why I support Obama, but at this point, it's all down to the numbers. And I am extremely tired. Spent all day canvassing, knocking on doors, making phone calls, etc. It truly is amazing seeing so many people so excited, many of them voting for the first time, many of them excited about politics for the first time in their lives. Whether you support Obama or not, you really need to respect the incredible historic nature of his campaign, and the fact that there are many, many people out there who feel empowered for the first time in their lives.

This is not something to be ignored. It's something to be celebrated. Ecstatically. I understand people who oppose Obama on policy reasons, but I don't understand those who are scared of him or hate him. Win or lose, support or oppose, those of us who are Americans ought to be really proud to see our fellow citizens achieve something that many of us have taken for granted for centuries.

Anyway, I ramble. If your polls are still open and you haven't voted, what are you doing reading Livejournal? Go vote!

Satirica is Here

2008-10-19T13:37:41Z

It’s here! The Satirica Anthology, featuring my story “The Babies at Nae-Long,” is out and on shelves! In hardback and everything! Here, Have some picturey goodness:

Ooooh! Aaaaah! Pretty spiff-looking, no?

So yeah, I disappear for a month at a time and then I just waltz back into your life, no “hi, how ya doin’” no “I love you and missed you,” not even an explanation for where I’ve been, just shillin’ my filthy wares all across the internet. That appears to be how I roll. But okay, a brief where-I’ve-been: China for awhile, which was awesome. More on that to come. Then back here, to the law mines, desperately trying to catch up on mountains of work before I returned to feed the LJ monster. I grant that took a little more time than I expected, but I am back in full force now. I doubt I’ll be able to catch up on all the great LJ I’ve missed, though, so if you have big news that I missed, please tell me in a comment or message!

Okay, so back to the antho. For those who missed earlier discussion, Satirica is an anthology that looks to examine social problems and realities in our society through a satirical lens (but in the original sense of satire, i.e, social critique, not in the “humorous” sense. My story, especially, is not very funny). It’s full of a lot of great up-and-coming authors, and a few more established names, as well.

My own work aside, I’ve really enjoyed all the stories in this and am ecstatic to be a part of it. Roy Dudgeon has done a great job putting it together, and I am forever in his debt. Each story is interesting, unique, and will hopefully go a long way toward making you think about society in general, the human condition, and the world around us. Also, it’s big: 24 stories = more bang for your buck. And who doesn’t like bang?

Anyway, Satirica is currently available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. I saw the other day that Amazon was already nearly sold out and going back for more copies, which is a big hooray, but I think they're ordered up again. I will likely grab a few myself, and maybe give one or two away here? Would there be any interest in that? Let me know.

So there, with a bang (aforementioned good thing), I am back and promise to be a good little community-member from here on out! Coming soon-- the terror of vacation summary!

A Quick Note to Myself

2008-09-02T23:52:49Z

I must remember…

That I am a good writer.

That the stories are worth telling.

That plot holes can be plugged.

That loose ends can be tied.

That cardboard characters can be born anew.

That flat writing can be made to explode.

That I have all the time in the world to make my art perfect.

That perfection is worth waiting for.

Friendly Note

2008-08-25T11:03:34Z

It has come to my attention that some people I swear-to-god I friended were not, for reasons unexplained, added to my friends list. And here I thought you were just being very quiet of late. This situation has hopefully been rectified. If you are among those people, know that I and Zoidberg Jesus still love you.

That is all.

Random Writing Thoughts

2008-08-20T10:34:07Z

I have established a general pattern for this book, it goes something like this: 1) writewritewrite 5 - 10,000 words. 2) Reach previously unthought-of plot development/scene that seems boring. 3) Ponderponderponder next scene for about a week. 4) Make major change to prior storyline without revising. 5) writewritewrite, rinse, repeat. Throw in the occasional “drop everything for day job” and that’s pretty much where I am. carrie_ryan suggested this may just be the way I write. I hope not, it’s pretty frustrating during the ponder periods.

So I am now in a ponder period and it is looking increasingly unlikely that I will make my goal of completing the first draft before I go to China next month, which I am now glad that I did not blog about planning on doing. Well, I was really rolling for a little while there, everything seemed like it was going to keep moving all the way through the end of the book, when I decided that one huge plot complication I was going to throw in should instead be another, which I think vastly strengthens the plot but simultaneously was totally unexpected and brought everything to a crashing halt.
I’ve got a lot of the elements of the ending in my mind, but I’m having difficulty tying them together, so I’ve decided to resort to (just for the end, mind you) my old nemesis, outlining. I’m not sure if this is another method of procrastinating or is legitimately helpful, but so far, the outlining seems to be going well, and I’m hoping for a breakthrough soon.

Since I’m normally not an outliner, I’m curious-- you outliners, how do you do it? How much detail do you go into? Do you change your outline as you write? I don’t know if I’ll ever totally give up being a pantser, but I’d love to hear how the other half writes.

Also, a word meter:

55,939 / 70,000
(79.9%)

I... Live(journal)

2008-07-28T03:02:06Z

So you may or may not have noticed that I have been somewhat absent of late… things at the Day Job spiraled out of control and I had to basically give up anything resembling a life for a little while. Which is to say, for about a month, my schedule has been: Get up at 5:30, thirty minutes or so of basic intertubes to wake up (only the essentials: news and webcomics... haven't even checked LJ in nearly a month. I know, I know, priorities), exercise, get ready for work, work all day and deep into the night, come home, eat, watch Daily Show, sleep, rinse, repeat. Fun.

Notice that nowhere in there was the critical activity: “write.” I actually had to make a conscious decision to give up writing; not that I didn’t have the time-- I know the purists will tell me that I could have cut out my wake-up internet or my Daily Show-- but because I didn’t have the mental energy. I just couldn’t spin all my time working and muster enough to get my plot going in my brain. I tried for awhile, but it wasn’t working. It was a painful decision, but after talking it through with carrie_ryan, I realized that sometimes that I just had to do it.

So I guess maybe this is time to do a brief post on work/writing balance. Maybe this should be a solicitation… I could use the advice myself. I guess my first thought for others would be that if you really want to write professionally (i.e., building a career and making money), choose a day job that doesn’t require you to devote 150% of your time and energy. Don’t get me wrong, I love lots of my job, but it is really like working a job and a half-- you’re there most of the time, you have to be working, as in no breaks, full-mental-energy-devoted working, the entire time you’re there, and even when you aren’t there, it’s hard to not think about it. And that’s really about all I’ll say about Day Job here, btw. Hopefully that secrecy will make you think I am a spy.

My other thought is that you need to take the time you need to get things done right. And that means that sometimes writing needs to win out, and that means sometimes the Day Job or other things need to win out. The trick is to keep one from pushing other off the face of the map, particularly writing. Too many people let the stress of life be an excuse not to write, myself included. Conversely, though, you shouldn't let the drive to write add more stress to an already stressful period. I have slowly come to the realization that when I need to take time off from writing, be that because I have to focus on Day Job or just because I have to take time to actually relax every now and then, I have to allow myself to not write ahead of time and then take advantage of that off-time without feeling guilty about it. And you know what? I think doing that lets me get back to writing more easily when the time period I've given myself expires.

So I guess the question is, how do you deal with it? How do you balance the pressures of a full-time job with the pressures of getting your writing done? I hear a lot of people saying “you have to write, no matter what,” and I think that’s completely true-- that’s why I normally get up way early. But I also think it’s true that when you have a stressful job, you need to take what little time you can to relax. So where do you draw the line? How do you prioritize? I could use the advice!

Oh, by the way, just to prove that I’m back, a word count meter:

45,358 / 70,000
(64.8%)

PS- lalam, I owe you a meme. It’s coming, I promise!

Everyone's doing it...

2008-06-28T15:11:41Z

I normally am not one for the memes, but when I saw the 100-book meme going around, I had to check and see where I was anyway, so I figured I might as well post it here. So like ta here we go!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

And I am adding a fourth category, as per the wise

raeputtputt:

5) List in blue the ones you've started, but not finished.

I should also add a category for books you think you might have read but have forgotten, but I'll spare you.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Spamdemonium Reviewed

2008-06-24T10:20:34Z

The very talented Aliette de Bodard had some nice things to say about my story Spamdemonium over at The Fix. She reviews the entire issue, so take a look and see what other good things are going on in there, too. The current issue of Baen's with Spamdemonium in it is still available on-line, a mere six bucks for heck of a lot of content.

I also have some great news about the anthology I mentioned earlier, but I'll save that for its own post a little later.

Finally, after some furious stops and spurts, a word count update:

36,332 / 70,000
(51.9%)

Woo-hoo, over half-way done! Had some set backs on the way, but still pretty amazing to me, given that I had never previously written anything over 8,000 words.

Like it's the end of the world...

2008-06-13T23:44:56Z

I read about a man who used twitter to get out of jail in Sudan or somewhere. Maybe that’ll work for me.

The sun is going down now. There are at least a hundred of them in the park behind the house. We are more or less completely unprotected, but they don’t know we’re in here yet. I’m scared to barricade the doors, I’m afraid the noise might attract them, so we’re holed up in the attic. Thank god for wireless.

The news coming through is sporadic at best, but if you haven’t seen it, look here, and here, and here, and mostly here. Before you do anything else, go there. I don’t know if this is everywhere… if it’s not happening where you are, SEND HELP. If it is happening where you are, godspeed.

We saw the first one this morning while we were walking the dog. “Dude totally looks like a zombie,” I said. God I hate myself sometimes. I saw a woman eat a baby today, straight out of a stroller. Eat it like a goddamn watermelon. I don’t know if she was the mother or… I don’t know why it matters.

The thing is, we talk about it all the time, and you talk about what you would do if it happened, and you say it will happen, but you don’t actually think it will happen. And then they’re stumbling around in the last rays of evening, jerking like marionettes without strings, and it’s strange and lovely in the twilight with the sun casting shadows through the neighborhood trees and the skyscrapers burning in the distance. And then what?

Here’s what I know: they’re faster than you would think. It makes sense really, rigor mortis takes hours to set in. I bet they’ll slow, as time goes by, but we haven’t seen it yet. But they’re not very coordinated, which is why I’m still alive. Not that they’re clumsy, but more like they aren’t good at moving, they’re not good at sensing, they don’t really have the capacity to pay attention for long. They get lost easily.

The other thing: I don’t believe they have supersenses like you see in the movies or comics or whatever. I think they’re still like normal, no uber-sense of smell or anything. And they don’t blink. I swear they don't blink. Which is good: with all the pollen and dust and crud in the air, their eyes will scratch up, and they won’t be able to see. Once that happens, they’ll have to hunt by sound. Maybe we could use some kind of sound weapon and deafen them-- then they would be totally helpless. Just remember, you heard it here first. I don't know, Toby Keith might work. harr harr. Let it not be said that he died without a sense of humor.

Speaking of which: They bite like a bitch. I really hope the infection part is make believe. Good luck, everyone. We'll be here, for as long as we can.

Shameless Self-Promotion: Spamdemonium

2008-06-04T10:39:05Z

As of June 1, the first issue of the third year of Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine went live, including my story, Spamdemonium. For any of you who don’t know Baen’s Universe, it’s a professional-level, SFWA recognized speculative fiction magazine founded by the late SF novel publisher Jim Baen and edited by world-renowned SF authors Eric Flint and Mike Resnick (who, I learned this weekend, has garnered more Hugo nominations for short fiction than any other author in history). Baen’s goal has been to put out quality fiction that’s actually fun to read; stories that could compete for the audience’s beer money.

Spamdemonium is my first ever professional level sale, and I’m super proud to have it in Baen’s. What’s even more awesome is that they’ve had artist Kip Ayers draw not one but two new illustrations for it. Sweet! Kip does a fantastic job of capturing the mood.

Anyway, if you’ve got the time and the change, check it out! It’s only $6.00 for the issue, which also has a ton of great stories from such names as jaylake, M. Allen Ford, Eugie Foster, and Eric Flint himself, so you’re really getting your money’s worth. Here’s the link, and the link directly to my story, where you can read the first half as a teaser.

Zombiefied

2008-06-03T02:39:33Z

As Promised, zombification

Con Report: I’m not a Vir-Con Anymore

2008-06-02T12:31:14Z

Last week, carrie_ryanand I were fortunate enough to stumble upon the fact that ConCarolinas, which we discovered the week after it happened last year, was scheduled for this very weekend just about 15 minutes from our house. I had never been to a con before, and I always wanted to, but honestly I've been a little nervous about them. I am not so much the how-you-say social animal, though I am the how-you-say extreme dork, so there was some conflict (con-flict. Get it?) there. Fortunately, with ConCarolinas nearby, we could easily go together and sample without committing to the whole thing. And this is what we did.

We didn’t make Friday, mostly on account of work (though we were both pretty upset to learn that we missed a panel on authors discussing thirteen ways the apocalypse could happen). Saturday, we mosied down for an 11 o’clock panel on novel writing (good stuff), stayed for a panel on the opening scene of your book (very good stuff), hit up a “first five-pages” workshop (could have used some work, but a few gems), did lunch and general con-stuff till 4, and then, the undoubted highlight, became zombies.

Yes, zombies. Who doesn’t love zombification? Clearly not us at the Davis-Ryan household. So when we saw the Bringing Out Your Inner Zombie panel, complete with zombie make-over, we knew we had found Our People. And yes, we have pictures (taken post-facto, unfortunately), which I will post separately to keep this post from eating your f-list.

Unfortunately, we did not get pictures of the mini-zombie walk which followed the panel, but suffice it to say that from now on I cannot ever say that I have never shambled around a crowded convention center pretending to be a member of the living dead. It was a proud moment for us all. Looking forward to the big walk in October!

So over all con impressions: we had a great time. I gather it was fairly small by con standards, but there were still plenty of people there and lots of fun to be had. I also got to meet the illustrious Mike Resnick, celebrated author and editor at Baen’s Universe (speaking of which, check out the table of contents for this month’s issue. Lower. Lower. Under Introducing. Right there, that’s it! John Parke Davis-- ayup, that’s me! More on this later.), if only briefly. I am now a con-vert (yes, the puns can keep going), though I don’t think I would have had nearly as good a time alone, and I don’t know if I’m totally ready for one that took up the entire weekend-- it was nice to be able to pop in for most of Saturday then pop out and go home when we were ready.

Oh, and did I mention Zombie Board/Card Games? Yes, we bought those. Lots of them. If you’re ever at our house, you will be forced to play them. Because zombies are awesome!

Eyes Forward

2008-05-29T16:13:33Z

I must tell myself, it’s the end product that matters, it’s the end product that matters…

jpsorrow has a good post today about the inner editor, which got me thinking. It seems to me that most people’s “inner editor” is distinct enough to be characterized in terms of separate entities. My personal inner editor isn’t just a voice in my head whispering that what I’m writing isn’t good enough—it’s every fiber of my being screaming it. You always hear to learn to switch it off, but for me, switching it off is like switching off my raging liberalism or my child-like sense of wonder at Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons—it’s just a part of who I am, and I can’t tell where “me” the writer is supposed to end and “me” the critic is supposed to begin.

Lately, I’ve been feeling a little depressed re: WIP. I’ve made a lot of progress, but I just can’t shake the feeling that it isn’t what I want it to be; it isn’t what it could be. I still love it, don’t get me wrong, but I am a perfectionist (at least as far as writing goes), and it is far from perfect. There are a number of things that I’m working out along the way, and suddenly, I wish I had written the book this way or that way. I want it to be good, I want it to be right, I want it to be eye-popping, and it just isn't there yet.

Which is why I repeat: it’s the end product that matters, it’s the end product that matters. Because suddenly, I realize that I could write the beginning better now that I’m almost half-way through it… and not because I’ve become a better writer (though hopefully I have). It's because I’ve learned the story better, gotten more of a grasp for the characters, where it’s going. And I bet I’ll know it even better once I’ve finished the whole dang thing. And when I do, I get the privilege of actually being able to go back and re-write the beginning, et al, to make it better.

Man, that’s daunting, especially with 40,000 words left before I even get there. But maybe that’s my issue—I’m looking to how much work it’s going to be to fix this thing instead of looking at how far we’ve come to date. I just have to remember, it doesn’t matter how leaky this ship is right now, because, at least at this point in my career, I don’t have to send her to sea until I get her in the shape I want her to be in. So whenever I think it sucks from now on, I’m just going to remind myself that this is only the beginning and it’s the end product that matters, it’s the end product that matters….

And for fun, here’s how far away I am:

29,422 / 70,000
(42.0%)

On Word Meters

2008-05-20T18:15:29Z

Some recent blogs about blogging (I guess that makes them metablogs, which sounds like an awesome Transformers villain) caught my eye regarding how much one should or should not show of their WIP. Personally, I love reading blogs about people’s writing dilemmas and how they solve them, or their successes and how they were inspired to them, and I hope to talk about my own issues on this blog. That said, I don’t plan on going into any specific details of my WIP on here, and I don’t plan on posting teasers. I’m not opposed to them… I love reading what other people are writing. I guess I just don’t want to show my hand before it’s ready. Maybe it’s just superstition, but I just feel like you shouldn’t show the sculpture while you’re still carving it… seeing it with all those chisel marks everywhere kind of spoils the majesty when you whip the cloth away later to reveal the completed thing.

Of late, however, both carrie_ryan and I have become a little word count obsessed. It’s surprising to me, as a reformed short story writer, how much you can get caught up in jacking those numbers up! I mean, in short fiction, anything over 7,000 words is basically unsellable unless you’ve already built up a name for yourself, so normally when I have 5,000 words on a story, I’m beating my head against the wall and screaming “why, god, why?” But I’ve gotten into it now, and zooming along at what is for me a pretty solid clip (I used to rejoice when I wrote 500 words a week.) The problem is that more words don’t equal good words.

The problem for me comes when a scene isn’t working right and I have to re-do it to put it together properly. The first thought I have is “I can’t, I’ll lose so many words!” or “that’ll put me back so far!” It’s especially daunting when I realize there’s a flaw early on I may have to go back and really fix and change everything to get right. This may not sound like the worst issue in the world to those of you who’ve been writing for a long time, but this is my first novel, and a large part of writing it is proving to myself that I can. Each step forward is a confidence boost, just because I’ve actually made progress. Each chip off that word meter is a blow backward.

But then Carrie passes down the advice of the ages and tells me “dude, you don’t have a deadline. What are you in a hurry for? Enjoy writing it.” And it makes me think, what am I in a hurry for? I guess I’m in a hurry to get it done, to show myself that I can, to feel good about it, to be proud of it, to shop it around, to get rejected, to get to work on the next one, and the next, until it sells, and then to ride the merry-go-round of publishing for as far as it’ll take me, for everything! And suddenly my jaw aches again like it used to when I was writing short stories, and everything I write seems terrible.

And that’s when it occurred to me… I’m in a hurry thinking about things other than this book. And thinking about all that isn’t going to give me a good book. Only focusing on the story I want to tell will get me that. And so I just have to remember to breathe deep, clear my conscience, let the word meter fall to the wayside, and fall, headfirst, into the story. Let’s hope I make a splash when I hit it.

And now, to show that I ain’t got no hard feelins against it, a word meter:

24,458 / 70,000
(34.9%)

One Foot in Front of the Other

2008-05-12T11:25:05Z

When my brother lived nearby (e.g., not on the opposite coast of the U.S. or, as now, on the opposite side of the world), we used to make a point every year of getting together for a huge hiking trip. One year, we decided to do a nice little four-day deal on the Foothills Trail in our native South Carolina. It was extremely hot that year, but we figured, what the heck, they're foothills, right? How hard can it be? Right. It turns out that Foothills is South Carolinian for "Vertical Pain Mountains."

The Trail itself was constructed by what could only have been either a masochist attempting suicide the slowest way possible or an evil genius whose entire family had been killed by hikers and who was now seeking revenge. For some reason, the designers saw fit to take this thing straight up and straight down each individual mountain (switch-backs are for losers), to the point that long ladders had been installed in a number of places. It didn't help that the temperature hit record highs while we were on the trail., well over a hundred degrees. I'll spare other details, including nearly being hit by lighting, attacked by wild boar, and swarmed by hornets, but suffice it to say that it was fairly close to my imagining of the Bataan Death March.

In the end, though, we did the entire 35-mile stretch in a little over two days. We were exhausted, dehydrated, blistered the whole time, but we never let ourselves stop. In the morning heat, clambering over ridges, my pack aching on my shoulders, I don't think I've ever been so exhausted in my entire life. We were too tired to think, too tired to talk, too stubborn to give in. Life became the patch of ground ahead of me. One foot in front of the other was the only thing I knew how to do, and that's how we made it, that's how we didn't drop our packs and lie on the ground exhausted for hours, or hitch a ride on a boat to home when the trail dipped down to a lake at the half-way point. One foot in front of the other. Nothing exists but the ground before me. One foot in front of the other.

That's how I feel about life right now. One foot in front of the other. Not that I'm complaining, really, I know I'm very lucky. Still, between writing and Day Job, I scarcely have enough time to take a breath, and it can get extremely overwhelming. But

carrie_ryan and I have our ten-year plan, and we're sticking to it. And that's how we're going to make it, one foot in front of the other. Sometimes that's the only way to make it anywhere.

And now, a word count meter:

20,526 / 70,000
(29.3%)

Broke 20k, w00t! Far and away, this is officially the longest thing I've ever written!

jp_davis @ 2008-05-07T13:53:00

2008-05-07T18:06:33Z

Just a quickie to note that gary_cuba has a great story up at Allegory (which also has a beautiful cover) right now. It's funny, I used to read a lot of short fiction when I was writing for that market, and with few exceptions, I ended up fairly underwhelmed by the major magazine offerings. That's possibly a reason I stopped writing short fiction. Gary's story is the first short story I've read in awhile that actually caught me by surprise and made me want to read more, reminded me why I love the form. I guess most of the stories I've read over the past years have seemed like, well, stories to me-- I don't know, maybe I'll try to explain that more later. The point is, it's a phenomenal story, and I don't recommend them lightly.

Also, for those interested in such things, a word meter. Hooray!

16,049 / 70,000
(22.9%)